Do we like Anxiety?
A character from Inside Out 2 (2024)
Our score: 4 out of 10. Her heart is in the right place and she truly wants Riley safe, but she's a bulldozer who won't listen. We'd back the goal, not the methods.
Anxiety shows up in Riley's headquarters just as Riley hits her teens. She's an energetic, fast-talking orange emotion with a head full of what-ifs. Her job, as she sees it, is to get Riley ready for the future so nothing goes wrong.
She isn't a classic villain. She's sincere and works hard, and her reasoning about protecting Riley is understandable. The trouble is that she treats every worry as an emergency and doesn't trust Joy and the older emotions to help.
We give her a 4 out of 10. Her motives are good, but her methods hurt the person she's trying to protect. The film's point is that anxiety is part of growing up, and that it does damage when it runs the whole show.